Summary: A Concise History Of The Netherlands | 9780521699174 | James C Kennedy

Read the summary and the most important questions on A Concise History of the Netherlands | 9780521699174 | James C. Kennedy

• 1 From the Margins to the Mainstream: Dutch History to 1384

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• 1.1.1 The Significance of Dutch History

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• On what has the Netherlands been the forefront for the last six centuries?

  • The country has been at the forefront of human change, playing a central and leading role in the development of the modern economy;
    
  • In the development of technical innovation, most famously but hardly exclusively related to water management;
  • At times in defining artistic and intellectual expressions of creativity. 

• What makes Dutch history such a fascinating study? Why is it important?

  • It is a fascinating study.in how a perennially fractured and highly differentiated society managed not only to survive but to thrive. 
  • From the Middle Ages power was widely diffused among many players, and the expansion of religious diversity - more extensive for a long time than practically anywhere else in Europe - after the Reformation only made the country more fractured.
  • That this situation did not lead to endemic chaos - despite serious periods of dislocation and violence - is one important reason to study the history of the Netherlands. 

• What characterizes Dutch society?

  The Dutch frequently needed to find common cause in tackling shared problems or in facing common enemies, creating over time the practices of consultative government and citizen participation that have by now characterized Dutch society for a long time.

• 1.1.2 Defining the Netherlands

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• Why is Holland often synonymous for the Netherlands for many countries?

  • The reason for this conflation is historical: since the sixteenth century Holland has been the most populated and the most economically powerful part of the country.
    
  • Down to the present day, it is where most of the country's political, economic and cultural elites live and work.
  • It is the part that still attracts the most tourists and visitors to its cities, including Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, and still offers the stranger the country's most quintessential landscapes: the dikes, the polders, the windmills. 

• Which Caribbean islands belong to the Netherlands? Which belonged to it in the past?

  • The Dutch once had an extensive "seaborne empire" that at present has been reduced to six Caribbean islands: Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, St. Eustatius and St. Maarten, all formally part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
    
  • Sri Lanka, Surinam, South Africa and Indonesia no longer constitute part of this kingdom.  

• What is the relationship between the Dutch and water?

  • Simply put, the Netherlands historically has been a shapeshifter, taking on new forms as the sea made its claims on the land and as the Dutch fought back.
  • Some lands once subject to human habitation have sunk irretrievably beneath the seas; the western coastline, for instance, was at points kilometers further west than it now is, and this is only one of many examples. 

• 1.1.3 Coverage and Periodization

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• What underscores a basic pattern of Dutch history?

  The country's past has been shaped by numerous interfaces with external developments that intruded into the affairs of the Dutch. These expressions of outside influences are not only - or are even most importantly - defined by armed invasion, but more by long-term economic and cultural processes.

• 1.2.1 The Earliest Human Inhabitants

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• What is the Pesse Canoe?

  • The so-called Pesse Canoe, named after the town in Drenthe where it was found, is a 10-foot dugout dating back to no later than 7,500 BC, making it the oldest extant boat in the world.
    
  • It was a suitable vehicle for inhabitants who spent much of their time hunting and fishing in a watery landscape of marshes, creeks and lakes. 

• When did human populations arise in the Netherlands?

  • As a result of extended ice ages, and the fact that the Netherlands lay far away from the warmer zones of more extensive human habitation, the land would not again witness humans until after 10000 BC, when the last ice age ended.
  • As the sea level dramatically rose and the once-dry North Sea filled from melting glaciers, the region became wetter, more subject to flooding and also more suited to human habitation, full of vegetation and wildlife. 

• 1.2.2 A More Settled Existence

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• When and where did the first signs of the Netherlands of the Neolithic age arise?

  The first signs in the Netherlands of the Neolithic age, in which farming and more sophisticated stone instruments were the key components, began about 5,500 BC on the plateaus of southern Limburg, a region with a loam soil that is well suited to agriculture, and with the closest proximity to the Neolithic technologies then spreading across Europe.